Empire Avenue is a site of four main apps: The Social Stock Market, Missions, your Profile and Empire Avenue Communities. Until this announcement/blog post, we have automatically listed you on the Social Stock Market when you signed up for an account. Starting in a week or so, individuals can sign up for Empire Avenue and then make the decision to “go Public” on the Social Stock Market at their leisure!

For those currently playing on the Stock Market, we want you to have people who are truly engaged to invest in. By better informing new individuals on the benefits and fun of the Stock Market and making sure they are ready to engage we feel the ROI and opportunities for both the current players and the newly listed player will be improved. Our goal is to increase retention on all four apps that make up Empire Avenue and a key application to us is the Stock Market.

Since a few months ago, Empire Avenue already functions as four separate applications and hence for most people on the service today, you will see very little changes in the user interface. There will be some changes with regards to viewing those accounts which are not yet listed. On those profiles, we will make clear that these are not traded accounts and instead will see how we can help you encourage them to list on the stock market!

I’ve prepared some Q&A below to answer some of the most prevalent questions:

1. What will the onboarding experience look like for a new person?

They will create an account as before but will not be participating in the Social Stock Market.

2. Will new people still get Network Scores? (these are the scores out of 100 for each Network)

Yes.

3. Will I be able to “de-list”?

If you have been on the Stock Market for more than 5 days, you will not be able to de-list. To de-list after 5 days, your only option is to create a new your account.

4. If I de-list within the first five days can I re-list later?

To prevent abuse, we will prevent re-listing after a de-list for three months. You are free to create a new account though.

5. Do I get to keep any currency that I generated during my time on the Stock Market?

Yes.

6. Is there an advantage to creating an account waiting for a bit and “going public”?

We believe there might be from a social promotional aspect. We also think that people will have a lot of fun in “going public” in the future.

7. How will a de-listed person look like in the API?

We already have a “trading” flag in the API. Accounts that are de-listed will have trading set to ‘disabled’. We may add new fields as necessary to help app developers.

8. Are you saying the Stock Market is an app inside of Empire Avenue?

Yes. A very important and fun application that works in conjunction with the other applications, like Missions, that make up Empire Avenue as a whole.

9. When do you expect the changes to take place?

We are currently testing all the on-boarding, messaging and various other things. The system has been using the new listing criteria and code for a few weeks and we will officially turn it on with an announcement in Empire Avenue General Discussion before the end of October.